gallium arsenide

covalent bonding

Besides the elemental semiconductors, such as silicon and germanium, some binary crystals are covalently bonded. Gallium has three electrons in the outer shell, while arsenic lacks three. Gallium arsenide (GaAs) could be formed as an insulator by transferring three electrons from gallium to arsenic; however, this does not occur. Instead, the bonding is more covalent, and gallium arsenide is a...

crystal growth

...surface in a chemical reaction that forms hydrogen chloride (HCl) molecules. Hydrogen chloride molecules leave the surface, while silicon atoms remain to grow into a crystal. Binary crystals such as gallium arsenide (GaAs) are grown by a similar method. One process employs gallium chloride (GaCl) as the gallium carrier. Arsenic is provided by molecules such as arsenous chloride...

...becomes deformed, since structural defects such as dislocations appear (see Figure 5). Although few crystals share the same lattice distance, a number of examples are known. Aluminum arsenide and gallium arsenide have the same crystal structure and the same lattice parameters to within 0.1 percent; they grow excellent crystals on one another. Such materials, known as superlattices, have a...

gallium

...one-to-one ratio. With the Group 15 (Va) elements nitrogen, phosphorus, arsenic, and antimony and the Group 13 elements aluminum and indium, gallium forms compounds—e.g., gallium nitride, GaN, gallium arsenide, GaAs, and indium gallium arsenide phosphide, InGaAsP—that have valuable semiconductor and optoelectronic properties. Some of these compounds are used in solid-state devices...

integrated circuits

...through water than through air, electron velocity is different through each type of semiconductor material. Silicon offers too much resistance for microwave-frequency circuits, and so the compound gallium arsenide (GaAs) is often used for MMICs. Unfortunately, GaAs is mechanically much less sound than silicon. It breaks easily, so GaAs wafers are usually much more expensive to build than...

...combining metallic elements from column III and nonmetallic elements from column V of the periodic table of chemical elements. When the elements are gallium and arsenic, the semiconductor is called gallium arsenide, or GaAs. However, other elements such as indium, phosphorus, and aluminum are often used in the compound to achieve specific performance characteristics.

lasers and light-emitting diodes

...the valence band and release energy equal to the energy gap of the material. In most cases, this energy Eg is dissipated as heat, but in gallium phosphide and especially in gallium arsenide, an appreciable fraction appears as radiation, the frequency ν of which satisfies the relation hν = Eg. In gallium arsenide, though up to 30...

LED

...energy packets of light. LEDs operate by electroluminescence, a phenomenon in which the emission of photons is caused by electronic excitation of a material. The material used most often in LEDs is gallium arsenide, though there are many variations on this basic compound, such as aluminum gallium arsenide or aluminum gallium indium phosphide. These compounds are members of the so-called III-V...

optoelectronics

A remarkable characteristic of these compounds is that they can, in effect, be mixed together. One can produce gallium arsenide or substitute aluminum for some of the gallium or also substitute phosphorus for some of the arsenic. When this is done, the electrical and optical properties of the material are subtly changed in a continuous fashion in proportion to the amount of aluminum or...

semiconductor properties

...germanium (Ge), and gray tin (Sn) in column IV and selenium (Se) and tellurium (Te) in column VI. There are, however, numerous compound semiconductors that are composed of two or more elements. Gallium arsenide (GaAs), for example, is a binary III-V compound, which is a combination of gallium (Ga) from column III and arsenic (As) from column V.

...each 100,000 silicon atoms. On a percentage basis, a small number of phosphorus atoms will change silicon from an insulator to a metallic conductor. Other semiconductors have similar properties. In gallium arsenide the critical concentration of impurities for metallic conduction is 100 times smaller than in silicon.